I kinda like the “Sponsors of Tomorrow” campaign that Venables Bell & Partners put together for Intel. For reasons yet to be explained, Geek Chic remains a popular trend, and VBP has capitalized on it — humorously, cleverly, and in a visually distinctive way.
That said, the script for the spot embedded below drives me nuts. It features two nerds talking about the best way to cut a cake-cum-microchip (or maybe it’s supposed to be a motherboard, which wouldn’t make sense, but whatever). Eventually, a fed-up, presumably hungry fellow employee zips around the pair, lops off a corner of the cake, and walks off with a “Was that so hard?” expression.
By my thinking, the nerds’ response to this act of heresy should be hilariously geekified — like, “Fine. You explain to management how it’s supposed to work without a logic gate”, or, “I hope you enjoy the taste of that gallium arsenide core”, or anything that continues the nerds’ earlier conversation, wherein they discuss the cake as if it’s an actual microchip. (I’m not always a great copywriter myself, but I’m okay at spotting problems.)
Instead, the folks at VBP decided that one of the nerds should just look after the douchebag in question and shout, “Why don’t you just pop all the balloons and spit in the punch?” Which is fine in terms of cadence and consonance, but entirely misses the boat on continuity.
Of course, underlying all this is a far more important question: AM I THE ONLY IDIOT WHO OBSESSES ABOUT THESE THINGS? Take a look for yourselves and see if it’s as bad as I’m making out:
sturtle [dot] com 
Good observation but I have another take.The spot isn't "about geeks, for geeks." It's geek chic served to the masses (i.e. lowest common denominator). And all the viewers in middle America will think spitting in the punch is much funnier.
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Oh, I suppose. But it's so…obvious. Meh.
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ok. first, let me say, i fucking love this campaign. seriously. almost all of the commercials make me laugh. second, i had the exact same reaction to this one. the ending is disappointing and not nearly as funny as the others in the series.finally, you are not the only one that obsesses about these things, but i think only marketing people would notice the difference. i bitched about it to the bf and he just looked at me like i was probably slightly nuts and maybe like he was rethinking our whole relationship.
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